Replacing all tokens based on properties file with ANT

Question

I'm pretty sure this is a simple question to answer and ive seen it asked before just no solid answers.

I have several properties files that are used for different environments, i.e xxxx-dev, xxxx-test, xxxx-live

The properties files contain something like:

server.name=dummy_server_name
server.ip=127.0.0.1

The template files im using look something like:

<...>
   <server name="@server.name@" ip="@server.ip@"/>
</...>

The above is a really primitive example, but im wondering if there is a way to just tell ANT to replace all tokens based on the properties file, rather than having to hardcode a token line for each... i.e

<replacetokens>
   <token key="server.name" value="${server.name}"/>
   <token key="server.ip" value="${server.ip}"/>
</replacetokens>

Any help would be great!

Answer 1

You can specify the properties file from which to read the list of tokens for the 'replace' task using replacefilterfile:

<replace file="input.txt" replacefilterfile="properties.txt"/>

Similarly, in a filter chain, you can use 'replacetokens' propertyfile:

This will treat each properties file entry in sample.properties as a token/key pair:

<loadfile srcfile="${src.file}" property="${src.file.replaced}">
  <filterchain>
    <filterreader classname="org.apache.tools.ant.filters.ReplaceTokens">
      <param type="propertiesfile" value="sample.properties"/>
    </filterreader>
  </filterchain>
</loadfile>